The Clockwork Man
by beastboydc
Summary: 'Victor was troubled by uncertain dreams that night. They started with a man with twelve eyes: one for each hour of the day, one for each month of the year.' Vic Stone feels lost. Control of his life is drifting out of sight, and he's losing sleep. Without his friends, without any help, he must conquer his internal and external demons. The clock is ticking. (Minor BBRae, RobStar)
1. Troubled Dreams

2:17 AM.

'Shit,' Vic stated simply. He wasn't one to swear, he knew, but he felt like this was justified, given the circumstances. He jerked his hand to the right, the wheel turned, the car shunted sideways just fast enough to avoid plowing into the barrier on the lane ahead, and what had to be the only other person on this stretch of road for three miles either way honked their horn for a solid thirty seconds before angrily speeding away past him into the night. He blinked, slowly, and sighed. He'd almost fallen asleep at the wheel _again_.

'I need more sleep,' Vic said to the nothings and nobodies packed into the car. 'I need more sleep!'

He punched the roof gently, and winced as the metal buckled slightly. This was less than ideal. 'Dude, you need to stop,' he said. 'Seriously. Staying up nights isn't going to do you any favours. It's stupid.' There was a long pause, and then: 'But clearly I know that. Or I wouldn't be literally telling myself not to do it.'

Vic stared blankly out at the ring-road. There were no other cars in sight, bar the occasional dodgy-looking white van travelling in the other direction. Sodium lamps cast unnatural shadows over long stretches of the worn tarmac, bleaching red to grey and grey to red. The darkness was an empty one, despite the persistent lights of the inner city to his left. He looked back at the dashboard clock.

2:17 AM.

Vic blinked.

4:17 AM.

'Shit.'

He ran a quick systems check. No, nothing wrong with his eyes. Two hours had indeed just passed in what seemed like an instant.

…Meaning that there was probably something more significantly wrong with him.

There was an off-ramp coming up ahead, so he took the turning. Enough night driving. He needed sleep.

Vic switched on the radio.

* * *

'Six O'Clock News-'

'Radio Four's Breakfast Programme-'

'Welcome back. Today is the 20th-'

' _You must be out! Of your brilliant mind-_ '

Dick handled a quick keyboard shortcut, and the window vanished to reveal an intensely bureaucratic government form. He had been avoiding filling it in for the last half an hour, but the nagging OCD ticking away in the back of his head refused to leave it unfinished. Particularly since it was a matter of official regulation. He briefly cursed himself for being an efficient worker, and was just about to take a look at Subheading Four: The Definition Of Assault (In Case We Hadn't Made This One Plainly Obvious) when the door opened and Victor stumbled in. Dick turned in his chair, eyebrow raised.

'Hey, Vic,' he said warily. 'You alright there?'

'I'm just fine,' came the grumbled response. Vic ducked behind a filing cabinet. 'Couldn't sleep, is all.'

'Right. Is… is that a problem for you?'

Dick couldn't see him from his chair. The room was small, but paper storage took up a large portion of the back wall. The rest was computer monitors arranged in a hemisphere around a worn, curved desk covered in ink and coffee stains. It wasn't a long wait, however, before the reply came back, curt and irritated, as Vic wandered back around the tall metal boxes dominating the space.

'Yes. Yes, it is a problem for me, despite what you might imagine.'

Dick paused a moment, gathering his thoughts. His lips were dry.

'I… I realise your whole situation is a delicate one. And I'm sorry if I said anything untoward. But-' Vic moved to speak, but Dick cut him off: 'But you never come in here unless you're looking for something. Usually that something is guidance of some kind. So – at the expense of sounding like a therapist – what is your problem today?'

Dick leaned back in his chair, hands open. Victor considered telling him what was on his mind, but then he noticed the way Dick's eyes uncomfortably drifted back and forth between the left and right sides of his face, and thought better of it.

'I… nothing.'

Dick looked surprised, and possibly concerned. He steepled his fingers. 'Nothing?'

'Nothing. I'm just tired, is all.'

Dick's voice adopted a plaintive tone. 'Look, Vic – I realise it's taxing, the whole Cyborg thing, but-'

As soon as he heard that word, Victor was gone, silently treading down the hallway outside. Dick let out a long breath, disappointed in himself.

'Rough morning, huh?' he muttered. 'Your loss.'

He wondered for a moment if he should follow, but the insistent clock in his head snapped his focus, and he turned back to his monitors.

* * *

When he wanted to avoid people, Victor slept in the garage. It was located down beneath the rest of the building – beneath the - he didn't want to call it the Tower, because it sounded stupid to him at this moment in time, it was just a glorified police station, but the garage was underneath it nonetheless. He had a spare bed in the corner next to his tinkering table. Unfortunately in this case his late-night work had spilled over into that personal space until there was a carburettor and a large gear shaft in the place of a pillow. With a tired grunt he swept it onto the floor with a wide gesture and slumped down onto the mattress.

Vic remembered, briefly, what it was like back in the days when he didn't have to plug his spine into the mains every night. It had been a lot freer then. He could swim, for one thing; whereas now he just sank, and risked short-circuiting something important in his life-support.

That was what it was, of course. Life support, and nothing more. Taking off his oil-stained shirt and throwing it aside, Victor stared vacantly at the metal chestplate underneath. As always, he thought, he was sporting the hood of a Chevy Corvair rather than anything remotely human.

'This is life now, asshole,' he said into thin air. 'Suck it up, get your head in gear and go the hell to sleep.'

It was a matter of moments for his fumbling fingers to find the charging cable hooked round the head of the bedframe and slot it into the cold port in his spinal column. Within seconds he could feel the energy starting to course through his circuits.

The problem was, naturally, the blood running through his veins.

* * *

Victor was troubled by uncertain dreams that night.

They started with a man with twelve eyes: one for each hour of the day, one for each month of the year.

They started with an unfinished person.

The world called out to him, and he saw the gears of the world turning, and Victor screamed.

* * *

14:54 PM.

Vic blinked.

14:54 PM.

Good.

He could hear voices coming from the kitchen as he walked down the corridor, shaking his head clear of the fog of broken sleep. They were familiar voices. He came to a stop, impressively silently for such a large person, and listened just outside the open doorframe.

'It's super cool, Rae,' came a male voice from inside. A loud crunching signifying the consumption of a brittle snack food followed, and then: 'There's like this guy with only half a face, and – the other half, the part that isn't there, it's just open onto his head, and it's full of gears and stuff, and – basically – I don't wanna spoil it, but there's this whole thing of "did he push him or didn't he?" and man is it cool. There's this segment where they can't breathe because otherwise the robots will hear them – that's why it's called "Deep Breath" -'

Then another voice, this one a rich female tenor. 'I'd never have guessed. Seriously, I wouldn't have. It's such a long shot. They should have called it something obvious, like, I don't know, "Garfield talks forever about something that _Raven has already seen_.'

There was an awkward silence. Vic held his breath.

'Oh,' came the male voice. It sounded completely nonplussed, and slightly hurt. 'When? You didn't watch it without me, did you?'

'The fact that you don't remember it would imply that I didn't, but apparently you have a memory like a sieve. We watched it live. You loved Capaldi instantly, and then cried because of the Matt Smith cameo at the end.'

'Ohhhh yeah.' A pause. 'I did not cry.'

'You did. Vic has footage.'

'Where is Vic?' the male voice interjected a little desperately. 'I haven't seen him all morning.'

'No idea,' the other replied flatly. 'He went out last night at about midnight and I haven't so much as heard an 80s synth pop song since.'

'Rae. Do not dis the 80s synth pop. It's awesome.'

Victor smiled a little at that, but he decided he'd heard enough. He was prying on private conversation. Food could wait, he thought. He had a mechanical metabolism, after all. He could keep going all day on a slice of ham and a carrot stick if need be, probably.

As he walked away, he heard Gar starting to sing one of his favourite songs, and an accompanying groan from Raven.

'Devenir gris. Devenir gris. One man on a lonely platform. One case standing by his side.'

'One eye staring cold and silent,' Vic whispered. 'Showing fear as he turns to hide.'

'Ah-ah-ah.

'We fade to grey.'


	2. Solitude Sometimes Is Best Society

Soon, Vic was driving again. It was an aimless sort of wandering, he noted – he wasn't going to any particular place. He was running away instead. What he was running from he wasn't quite sure. There was part of it at home, he knew; part of it in his garage and part of it in his friends. But that wasn't the full story. It was like he had the shape of the puzzle, but no idea whether the overall picture was _Paradise Lost_ or _Grand-Guignol_.

Vic's hands jerked sideways on the wheel, in a sort of reflexive motion. To the right, a nearby truck honked a low blast on its horn. He felt gears turning relentlessly in his skull, and then something dark clicked into place.

Vic remembered the accident, and not for the first time. It varied, his perception of the event; sometimes the lens of memory was blurred, sometimes it focused sharply on every individual detail. Whatever the case, as time passed that lens warped with age and disuse. Nowadays Victor Stone functioned on internal storage and cybernetic multi-range scanning technology. His human eye was his bad eye. The replacement on the other side of his face was the good one.

Back then, before the crash, his life seemed dulled in comparison. The world had been a sepia photograph instead of a 4D experience in Dolby Digital Surround Sound. But at the same time, strangely enough, it seemed… fuller. That was the only word Vic could think of to describe it - in the sense that it was full of irrational, random error and unreliable human contact. Nowadays preventative algorithms in his quantum processors warned him if he was about to do something stupid. Not that he missed stubbing his toes on blocky furniture, but existence lacked a sort of intangible quality that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

He saw, now, all too clearly, the dashboard of his old car.

* * *

6:43 AM.

'Dude, your music _blows_. Can't we put something other than frickin' _Human League_ on for just five minutes?'

Vic smacked Gar in the shoulder, mock-annoyed. Outside, rows of pine trees blurred past by the sides of the road. There were a few cars out already, and a large concentration of trucks with huge shipping containers. Vic had counted thirteen Eddie Stobart drivers on their way back into the city, and that number was only going to increase from here on out. 'You played _Sergeant Pepper_ all the way up, so I'm gonna play my music all the way back down. My car, my rules.'

Raven's dry voice spoke up from the back seat. 'Golden rule: Don't dis the 80s synth pop.'

Gar spun round, pushing his brown hair up his forehead. 'Don't you start on me too, Legs. I get enough shit from the King of the Dashboard over here without the Queen of Snark getting on my ass.'

Raven sneered. 'In your dreams, _Fonzie_.'

'Guys,' Vic interrupted. 'It's _way_ too early for this. I hate that Dick made us drive down at this time as much as you do, but remember that _I'm_ the one who has to pay attention to the road.'

'What's the Dicklebird even up to?' Gar moaned. 'He says he can't come up for a fucking two-day holiday and then tells us we need to be back by eight in the goddamn morning because of some "meteorological phenomenon" that he won't even _identify_.'

'Gar,' warned Vic. 'Don't be too harsh on him. I'm sure he has his reasons.' He felt a vibration in his pocket, and fished his phone out of the warm fabric. 'See, I've got a message from him now. I bet it's to tell us more about the -'

His voice cut off. Raven probably arched an expectant eyebrow from the back seat. Gar gestured impatiently. 'Well?'

'He says to stop driving now and get out of the car.' Vic tried his best to keep his eyes on the road. 'No further explanation.'

Gar's brow furrowed. 'But we can't. Not really. We're in the high-speed lane. Vic, can you pull over, or -'

It was at that moment that the light burst from the clouds, virulent and alien, and rocketed across the slowly brightening orange-streaked sky. It was a striking sight, even in memory – the dark fingers of water vapour silhouetted against the deep blue expanse above, and just below that the blinding, flickering object trailing black smoke and cinders like an envoy from hell. They all stared, then, looking up in awe through nearly-shut eyelids at the light in its greenish intensity, and for a moment it felt like the world stood still.

If Vic had been able to zoom in then, if he had been able to focus his vision on the collapsing, burning object like he could now, he might have seen a figure he would grow to call a friend. He couldn't blame Starfire for what happened. But she was still there.

It was a miracle, frankly, that they hadn't run into a huge pile-up in the road. As the meteor disappeared beyond the trees at blistering speed Vic remembered himself, righting the car, and breathed a sigh of relief as it straightened out. His mental state didn't quite follow along. Was that some kind of alien object? Was that what Dick had warned them about? Was it -

He only had a moment to process what had happened, however, before the concussive boom from the object's passage tore a hole in his eardrum. The wheel twitched to the right, and then there was a flicker of darkness from the back seat and the car swerved, flipped and crashed down with such sheer sudden force that the belt on Gar's seat snapped, throwing him headfirst through the windscreen with a sickening crunch.

There was a moment of pure deathly silence, where even the clockwork pump of Vic's heartbeat faltered, and for that brief second everything stopped.

Vic choked, slightly, seeing the blood starting to pool under Gar's limp motionless body. He tried to move from his seat. He paused, hiccupped, and then something huge and heavy swerved to the right just outside and a shipping container came through the passenger window.

* * *

Thinking on it now, he still flinched at the image of the huge mass of metal coming towards his face. Gar was lucky, he reflected, though still inoperable, with his flesh completely lacerated and his stomach impaled on a jagged piece of roadside barrier. Raven, of course, made it out unscathed. At the time he'd attributed it to blind luck, but there was always going to be more to it than that. He didn't blame her any more than he did Starfire. But it was still horrific, the fact that his last memory of something approaching normality took that sort of tone.

No, he thought briefly. 'Normality'. Not the right way to express it. Now the left side of his face was gone, replaced with what amounted to half a toaster and a red LED, and that _was_ his normality. Maybe, he thought, it was a kind of hypernormality. After a brief period of initial resistance he'd thrown himself into his new identity with a self-destructive energy that ignored the reality of his situation, and he wasn't sure if he'd broken out of it yet. He didn't know _how_ to get out. But he was damned if he wasn't going to find a way.

* * *

When Vic walked up to the dimly lit bar, the first thing he saw was the usual sign on the door. 'No technology. All phones, laptops, recording devices MUST BE SWITCHED OFF.' Obviously Vic couldn't turn off all his systems, but he could depower the advanced cybernetic sensors built in to every fibre of his being. With a couple of small tweaks, his better eye became just an eye, and nothing more.

The place was packed. Vic had to duck under a low beam to get into the main room, where a small crowd of bustling people seemed to fill the space. The bar was underground, with no windows and a hipster sort of vibe that permeated the air with its chatter and slight fug of steam hanging near the ceiling. There were a large number of small circular tables just in front of a stage where a band was setting up for an early performance. Each one, unfortunately, was packed with people chattering away over hot food and drink. The only space available seemed to be in one of many small booths over by the back wall, all smothered in shadow. Vic resigned himself to the fact that tonight he'd probably be sitting alone.

He trudged over to the empty booth, taking care to make sure the hood on his jacket covered the metal façade over the left side of his face. As Vic sat, there was an intake of breath from beside him, and he jumped back.

There was someone sitting in the dark, he saw now, who for some inexplicable reason he hadn't picked up on. How hadn't he seen that? Was there something wrong with him?

'Woah,' came a tentative voice from the booth. It had a soft, slightly accented tone to it, noted Vic. 'It's alright. I'm alone anyway.'

Vic looked a little more closely. It was apparent, now, that there was a young man in the semi-circular seat, cradling a weak beer in long thin pianist's fingers. The man brushed his straight black hair from his eyes in a nervous manner and gestured to the spot Vic had recently vacated. Vic frowned, then remembered he could almost certainly hold his own in a fight if it came down to it. He had nothing to worry about. He was alone, anyway, so what of it?

Vic sat, slowly. 'Thanks.'

'Don't mention it.'

There was a moment of awkward silence, until the other man seemed to remember himself with a start. He proffered his left hand. 'My name's Will.'

Vic hesitated, then took it in his gloved own. 'Victor.'

'Oh, don't worry. I know,' Will replied. 'I recognised you,' he added hastily. 'Big fan. I'd know your face anywhere.'

Vic sighed, and took his hood down. 'I'd been hoping for a night _without_ someone recognising me, but there you go.'

Will chuckled nervously. 'I'm not going to ask you for an autograph or anything. It's just… cool seeing you here. In person, and not on TV. I know there's controversy about all of you, sometimes, but I'm… I'm very much on your side. It's good to have you around.'

Vic grunted a wordless response. 'I'm getting a drink.'

Will looked a little crestfallen, but Vic didn't notice. His thoughts were consumed within themselves, fervently wishing he'd just stayed at home. Right now he could be… he could be…

He could be driving again, falling asleep on the ring-road with only the distorted, lonely voice of Gary Numan to keep him company. With that in mind, Vic decided, what he was doing now was infinitely better. It was a step in the right direction. All he had to do was navigate the social cues laid out before him with a reasonable level of tact, and perhaps he'd be halfway back to reality. At the moment the biggest problem facing him was the need to remain sober until the end of the night. Vic wasn't sure he could manage that at this point.

As he pushed his way through the crowd, Vic thought to check the time.

19:30 PM.

The minute hand on the old wall-clock touched the number 6. With sudden ferocity, a voice behind him screamed out into the babble of voices, but Vic seemed to be the only one to hear it.

'Seven Hours Thirty Minutes Zero Seconds!'

Vic whirled around. Though the shriek seemed to have originated from a spot right behind his head, there was nobody there.


	3. Are 'Friends' Electric?

Victor considered his friends. He did so in an analytical sort of way, trying his best to forget the rose-gold haze that surrounded them in his usual thoughts on the matter. Dick – sorry, _Robin_ while out here – had a database full of details on each of them. It was hardly secret, and even if it had been Vic would have had no trouble unearthing it, so he pulled it up on his internal monitor and pondered its contents.

 _Let's start with the man himself._ Vic briefly glanced over to where Dick spun through the air, mid-flip, his supporting hand balanced on a surprised mobster's shaven head. Richard Grayson, the guy who told people his name was 'Dick' just to see if he could handle it. He was the tactician. The one who dared to go where no hand had ever set foot. The dual Machiavelli-Romeo, the scheming poser, the undisputed leader. Vic kicked in a man's kneecap and barely registered the scream as the bone shattered. According to this, Dick thought there was a high chance he was autistic in some capacity. He could see that, Vic reflected. It was just something new, and surprising, which was why a stray riff of gunfire caught him off guard and forced him to duck behind a grimy JCB forklift. But that was Dick. The surprisingly warm man with the battle computer in his head. Dick was more machine than he was, thought Vic, but he didn't look it.

The forklift was taking a beating from some asshole with a machine-gun and an inferiority complex. Victor ran a few ideas past his core processor. The small tactical missile in his shoulder would deal with the problem with a 99.5% efficiency rate, but it also risked killing the man. Not to mention, he only had one. He might need it later. Missiles were expensive. His next-best option was a side-on assault, head turned to shield the right-hand side of his face, but even that was risky. 44.2% success rate. Too low. Vic decided on the missile, but just as he was prepping the target lock there was a salvo of arcing screams not unlike one of those throwable NERF rockets and two or three virulent green bursts shot across the large warehouse to blast the inferiority complex guy off his feet.

Victor shot a mock-salute off to Starfire, whose lithe form hovered at the ceiling near the back. She waved, and probably smiled. Even without the enhanced zoom on his false eye Vic could see the muscles bulge in her arms as she did so. He still wasn't over the fact that even with the impossibly advanced tech built into every fibre of his body she could still bench-press something like three times as much as he could. Jealousy? No. More like friendly competition mixed with awe. Kory's usual nonchalant brightness and sheer optimism, Vic decided, were impressively effective at masking the unstoppable force of nature she became when she was angry. Her brain, in a kind of paradoxical naivety, tended to automatically sort people into good and evil, friends and foes, the trustworthy and the untrustworthy. Dick's files suggested that this left her vulnerable to deception if not to physical assault. Bullets impacted her like punches might, solid hits leaving bruises and glancing ones ricocheting off her diamond-lattice skin. Knives just slid off like she was coated in chainmail. But, Victor thought, it was easy to focus on the physical. Many would judge Star based entirely on her otherworldly top-model looks. No, she was the instigator, the spirit of the group, the core of energy who spurred the others on to greater heights. She was warlike and joyful by turns, and – to Vic at least – was a source of perennial awe.

Vic made a decision, and began to shunt the forklift forwards along the rough concrete floor. His systems told him he was at 30% motor capacity, so he re-routed some of the defensive shielding into the piston-powered arm units and accelerated sharply. He was only aiming a couple of metres in front, where he'd be able to get behind a thick reinforced pillar and from there have a greater tactical advantage, but as it happened powering down his shields might have proved fatal. A stray shower of bullets happened to spin towards the forklift, and for a brief moment as Victor's head turned upwards he saw in dramatic quarter speed the tightening of a finger on a trigger followed by the slow curve of the gun as it arced round towards his hopelessly exposed face.

Luckily for him, a green-red-white blur shot into view from the side, twisting and changing, and the bullet that would have burrowed into Victor's exposed eyeball instead embedded itself in an outstretched shaggy paw. There was a grunt of not-quite-pain as the bear-that-used-to-be-Garfield-Logan stumbled from its continued momentum and landed heavily and awkwardly on the pillar. Vic, after a moment of brief shock, leaned forward and hefted Gar back towards the JCB. Gar gave him a look. Vic turned away quickly. His friend's shapeshifting was never pleasant to behold, bloody muscle and bone sliding over twisted cartilage in a truly repulsive manner that left him gagging at an imagined smell. After a moment, the slick wet flesh-melding noises from behind ceased, and Gar breathed out. 'Thanks, dude,' he said briefly.

'Don't bother,' Vic replied.

'Dick says go cannonball.'

This was one of the many standard strategies they'd employ as a team. They were pinned down by a cluster of men taking shelter behind some thick concrete barriers at the back of the room. Running towards the men would just get them shot. Even Gar couldn't take a full belt of .308s from an M240 and expect to retain any reasonably solid shape. If they had good aim, and one or two of them certainly did, Vic saw, they'd even be able to beat Starfire into the floor with the sheer force of hundreds of machine-gun bullets. Several in the same location would break the skin, and then it would be all over.

So instead they used the 'cannonball', which consisted of a strange sort of funnelling manoeuvre that delivered a payload right into the heart of the enemy. If it was executed well, it worked slightly horrific wonders. Gar was the one who carried the payload, naturally – his ability to shape-shift allowed him to shield the payload and protect it from harm. Vic considered his position as Gar upped the keratin shielding on his right side and made a run for it back across the warehouse to the doorway through which they'd come in. Gar was at odds, Victor felt, in a warzone. On the one hand he was inherently pacifistic, but on the other he exuded an overbearing sense of care that extended to just about everybody. In other words he liked to protect people, and if he had to help his friends crack a few skulls together he wouldn't hesitate. Gar did, however, play more of a defensive role in the team. It contrasted wildly with his slightly snarky, good-natured humour in everyday life, but perhaps played into – Vic quoted Dick's database here – his 'own need to be protected'. Whatever that meant. Victor didn't want to pry too deep. The information about them all here was exhaustive, and he wasn't looking to discover anything too personal about Gar. Their relationship was simple as it was, and Vic wanted to keep it that way.

'Alright,' came Dick's voice through his earpiece. 'Vic, I'd like you to move approximately three metres to the right for optimal firing range. I'll count you down once we're all in position.'

Victor grunted in response, and shifted himself sideways, behind the pillar. As he did so, the near-constant rattling drumbeat of gunfire petered out weakly. There was an almost awkward silence. The chamber echoed with every stray footstep or intake of breath. Someone fired a gun, once, with no response. Vic trod carefully, all too aware of how his metal bulk tapped and clinked against the concrete floor, and listened for the fearful raising of gun barrels.

For a long moment, there was nothing.

'Vic,' Dick said in his ear, 'Go twenty degrees at 700 Hertz. Now.'

Vic's fingers folded back onto his wrist and his palm split into three segments. He breathed in, leaned round the side of the pillar and fired.

Two hundred decibels of controlled sound blistered the concrete barrier apart, making several men duck for cover as Kory's toxic lasers scored black lines in the wall just over their heads. Vic kept his focus on his covering fire, but out of the corner of his eye he noted a large green blur charging up to where their opponents cowered temporarily. Victor and Star couldn't kill the men, couldn't even hurt them too much, so there was only a short window before they caught on and began to return fire. Thankfully, Dick had had them train that short window down to a tee. Gar lumbered to a stop shortly in front of the barrier, reached over his back and helped a dark human-shaped hole in reality vault over the concrete and into the small crowd.

Vic ceased firing. His job was done.

There was a brief confusion, a shot or two, the sound of something fleshy tearing, and then roughly thirty seconds of terrified pained screaming. Victor flinched as a line of blood spattered up the back wall. Other than a low sobbing, everything went quiet. Starfire drifted slowly down from overhead, averting her eyes slightly. 'Robin' – Vic rolled his eyes – appeared from nowhere and jogged quickly to the scene, already pulling a roll of gauze from some concealed pocket. Gar shrank and began to force bullets out of his skin, tired. Vic hesitated a moment longer, then walked forward. He nodded to Gar, braced himself, and turned the corner.

All things considered, it wasn't that bad. There weren't any severed arteries this time, just sheared flesh and maybe the odd snapped tendon. Victor couldn't help but find it in himself to pity the men, despite their attempted murder and drug-running. He was a naturally forgiving person.

Raven was not. He looked up at her now, shaking blood from her hands, and felt nothing but discomfort upon seeing her satisfied smile. She was like a little sister to him ordinarily, but a little sister who scared him. Vic's mother had been religious; which was, he suspected, part of the reason she had split from his harshly atheist father, but the end result of that was that he retained a flickering fear of the supernatural. The concept of the devil wasn't something he could reconcile himself to, but from time to time when he talked with Raven he saw the devil in her eyes. She was, nonetheless, a good person. Vic wasn't sure if their moral codes aligned exactly, but he knew that much. She laughed, thought, spoke like the rest of them, tried as hard as she could to fit in. Dick noted a deep-set self-doubt in her that Vic certainly hadn't noticed any evidence of. Her raw, vicious passion tended to overshadow everything else. Raven was a glass sword, Victor decided. She cut hard and fast, but was fantastically brittle. Sometimes he felt like he could snap her in half by tapping her at the base of her spine. Mind like a steel bar, he said to himself. As he said, she scared him.

Vic saw that Dick was already grilling one of the injured men, whose tongue ran like a river the instant he saw Raven shoot a burning glance in his direction. Starfire was busy putting an unconscious boy in the foetal position. Gar was nowhere to be seen. There was a drug shipment to be intercepted and Vic had already almost died twice today.

In other words, it had been an unremarkable Tuesday.

* * *

Thinking about it, none of his friends were quite like Will.

Vic had talked to Will in the bar for hours that night, unable to extricate himself from the incessant stream of chatter. Strangely enough, the young man with his nervous manner, jittery hands and thin dark hair made good company. He knew a fair bit about robotics, Vic's chosen area of academic expertise. More than a fair bit. It turned out that Will had studied an eclectic branch of nanorobotics at a top university in his home town of Wuhan in China. Victor didn't think Will was exactly a man of action. In fact, he seemed to shy from any sort of physical contact. Victor discovered this upon attempting to shake Will's hand at the end of the evening, at which suggestion Will recoiled with a flushed face and shook his head violently.

When Vic recounted the story of the drug bust to an enraptured Will on a later occasion, he noticed how the other man physically shook at descriptions of violence. There was some buried past there, perhaps. Vic didn't want to pry.

Vic met with Will increasingly often after that, but it wasn't enough to stave off the hollow incompleteness that beat inversely within his chest. His days were composed of whirling blurs of action, broken frustrating silences and long periods of unfinished thought. His nights were endless circles, wrapping the city like the legendary ouroboros. Vic felt like the snake, then, swallowing his own tail in a fruitless cycle of nothingness. His friends noticed his absent non-conversation, his quiet unhappiness, his dissociation, but none of them knew quite what to say or what to do. Dick tried to talk, but Vic refused to let anything on. Starfire gave him worried encouraging smiles and said little. Gar distracted Vic with innumerable inane rounds of _Mario Kart_ , and Raven just made scathing jokes at his expense. All in all, everything felt just slightly out of joint.

* * *

Vic dreamed vividly every night for weeks, and it was always the same. Every night he would wake up sweating, with a voice in the back of his head screaming itself hoarse at the world in general.

'Twelve Hours Zero Minutes Zero Seconds!'

He'd look at the time, and it would be midnight exactly.

One night, though he didn't dare open his eyes, he woke to the feeling of cold breath on his face.

Vic was somehow sure that if he looked, he'd never close his eyes again.


End file.
